Ideal Blog

Terms like 3G, 4G, 5G and LTE are all too common these days. Many still wonder what they are and what the terms stand for. In simple words, these are the generations of wireless connectivity, hence the G. Each subsequent generation is better than the previous one like it is with processors, smartphones etc. Among other things that are improved with every generation, there is bandwidth – the maximum speed at which data can transfer on your internet connection, aka internet speed by laymen. Cellular and Wi-Fi connectivity are the major parts of entire wireless internet connectivity around the world.

Mobile users are growing with time and resultantly Wi-Fi usage on mobiles. It is now a challenge for internet service providers to give their users the capacity and bandwidth they demand. When internet just set foot in this world, 1G technology offered a maximum speed of 14.4Kbps. The latest 4G internet connectivity offers speeds of up to 100Mbps using Wi-Fi. It is said that 5G technology will start to become common from 2020 and will offer speeds of up to 1Gbps. The best thing about this technology will be the efficient use of resources resulting in low-cost and affordable technology with higher reliability.

The networks that will support 5G technology will not be using copper and fiber technology. Instead, mm-wave wireless connections will be used lowering the infrastructure costs by big margins and making deployment faster and easier. The new technology will give benefits not only to the tech companies that provide internet connectivity but ecommerce section as well. It’s not always the fault of website developers if a website takes more than 2 seconds to load causing nearly 85% traffic to abandon the page. 5G technology will make a huge difference for ecommerce industry as well.

Technology to support faster bandwidths of future is also being improved. In Florida and Netherlands, researchers tested a 7-core cable made of glass fiber for its transmission speeds. They recorded transmission speeds of up to 255Tbps, which is 2,550 faster than the fastest internet connection available from a commercial ISP. A pledge by UK government holds that every house in the region will soon have an internet connection with speeds of up to 10Mbps at least. Then there is Google Fiber service, promising to deliver speeds of at least 10Gbps to its customers.

The future of bandwidth and connectivity is surely going to be staggering for those who have lived in the 1990s. However, all these efforts to increase internet speeds and bandwidth capacities are not only for end users. Internet speed has a big role to play in the coming times when 3D printing will be common. Google is making driverless cars and these cars will be connected to each other on a network. They will be transferring data at high speeds and latency does not stand a chance in this particular application of internet speed. Think about it, the data produced by a new Ford car in just one-hour amounts to 25GBs. Last but not least, the future of cloud computing depends heavily on increased internet speeds and bandwidths in future.